UK opposition leader Keir Starmer has set out five “national missions” that he says will define a Labour government if the party wins a general election expected next year.
(Bloomberg) — UK opposition leader Keir Starmer has set out five “national missions” that he says will define a Labour government if the party wins a general election expected next year.
Unveiling the pledges in a speech on Thursday, he said the outcomes would be measurable so “the public can hold us to account.” Only the first two have definable goals, but Starmer said he would set out metrics for the others in the coming months.
The missions are:
- Secure the highest sustained growth in the Group of Seven
- Make Britain a clean energy superpower with zero-carbon electricity by 2030
- Build an National Health Service fit for the future by reforming health and care services
- Make Britain’s streets safe by reforming the police and justice system
- Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage, for every child.
Starmer says the missions are deliverable so long as his government is “relentless, focused and works in partnership” with business.
So just how ambitious are the first two plans, assuming Labour — which has a commanding opinion-poll lead over the ruling Conservatives — is in power for a full five-year parliamentary term from 2025 to 2030?
G-7 Growth
In the first 20 years of this millennium, up to 2019 before the pandemic, the UK was the fastest-growing G-7 economy on just four occasions, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund.
On average over the two decades, Britain finished third behind the US and Canada. The UK was the fastest growing in 2022, but that expansion was off a low base after a deep Covid-induced recession. The recovery from the pandemic has been slower than any other advanced industrial nation.
However, demographics give the UK a natural advantage from 2025 to 2030 over Italy, Japan, Germany and France.
According to United Nations estimates, the UK population will grow 2.5% by then. Germany, Italy and Japan will have shrinking populations, which will make it harder to maintain aggregate growth. France’s population will grow just 1.3%.
Both Canada and the US will see faster population growth than the UK, though, and it is hard to see how the UK can overtake them.
The only obvious route to the top of the G-7 pack would be by closing the 20% productivity gap with the US, and the smaller but still significant gulf with Germany and France. But that challenge has proved too much for every UK government since 2010 despite being a priority. In short, it’s hard to see how the promise will be kept.
Net Zero
Starmer’s commitment to clean electricity by 2030 accelerates current government plans by five years, which is extremely ambitious.
The Conservatives decided not made their goal an official target because 2035 is already a challenging timeframe. In 2022, 49% of UK power was generated by zero-carbon sources including wind, nuclear and hydro.
One issue is back-up generation and what the government will rely on if that is not gas. There is unlikely to be enough new nuclear capacity on stream by 2030, use of carbon-reducing technology is unlikely to be widespread and demand for electricity is expected to increase by the end of the decade.
Capacity auctions, government subsidies that pay power plant operators to keep capacity available, are currently giving subsidies to fossil fuels beyond then, which would mean Starmer having to tear up contracts. That wouldn’t go down well especially as these companies are investing in clean energy, too.
“Put simply, there is no way of decarbonising our power system by 2030 – which will require new pylons as well as generation – without making it considerably faster and cheaper to get permission to build,” Adam Bell, a former civil servant who is now head of policy at the consultancy Stonehaven, said in a paper last year.
“At the moment delivering a new onshore or offshore wind farm can take five to seven years, which would eliminate any possibility of achieving Labour’s target.”
–With assistance from Tom Rees.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.